00:00I imagine growing up with your dad, especially the monk era,
00:07going outside would just be the world being his fan club.
00:10Because I cannot believe, I posted a video of your dad two years ago,
00:15the amount of comments from France.
00:17I think you're a rock star in France, as I can tell.
00:20Like, they just love you.
00:23I mean, I can't imagine, like, they just must be like,
00:26oh, my God, I love you.
00:27Oh, my God, I love you.
00:28I must be the Jerry Lewis of my generation.
00:31Didn't they love Jerry Lewis, too?
00:33Yeah.
00:34My dad is beloved.
00:36But growing up in Los Angeles, celebrities are a dime a dozen.
00:41Right.
00:42And my dad is very private and very intentionally wanted to stay out of the tabloids,
00:54didn't want PR, just wanted to have his work-life balance.
01:00And I think he did a really great job of that.
01:02How did you come up with the idea for the book?
01:04So the culinary narrative, which I love the idea,
01:07because at first I was thinking they were talking about a memoir.
01:11And I refer to it as the M word.
01:15I don't really want to do that.
01:16I'm not ready for that in my life.
01:18I have an aversion to that.
01:21But I like the phrase culinary narrative.
01:24And I'm imagining that they made it up just for me.
01:30Memoirs also have kind of this connotation that they're salacious,
01:35they're tell-alls, they're deeply excavating.
01:37So it just carries a certain kind of expectation.
01:42And this is, well, first of all, there's nothing to tell.
01:45My dad is squeaky clean.
01:47There's no skeletons in his closet.
01:50Not that I'm going to put in a book, no.
01:53Right.
01:54But it made so much sense to tell my dad's family story through the lens of food,
02:00because food is what brings us together every day at the reunion
02:06and is just such a part of our family.
02:09How many people are there?
02:10I mean, 10 siblings and their families.
02:14How do you have room?
02:15It's insane.
02:16It is insane.
02:17It is, it is, that's exactly the word.
02:20And we even, we even invoke that word in the book.
02:24Well, we do have some property there.
02:27And there's a certain number of, you know,
02:29bedrooms that can accommodate a number of people.
02:32But for that week in the summer,
02:35everyone else just will, you know, rent cottages or other places.
02:38So nearby.
02:39But we have one, we own one property that is big enough to accommodate
02:44the meals and the games and the activities.
02:46And so that's how we, that's how we structure it.
02:50I feel like people reading this, like, this is the fantasy that people have.
02:55Like, you have this big, like, literally, that's, to me,
02:59like the definition of when they say someone's rich.
03:02Like, to have this big family, everyone's speaking to one another,
03:05which is like, that's also like a miracle.
03:07And that you all meet and ate for a week is just, it's unbelievable.
03:12It is.
03:13It is.
03:14It's, it's not, it's not necessarily without its drama.
03:19It's, it's not, I would, I would not say, I wouldn't say it's easy.
03:24I would, I would also say it's, and we say in the book, it's not a vacation either.
03:29It's something else.
03:31It's, uh, effortful, but, but is, you know, kind of rewarding.
03:36And don't you think, Joss?
03:38I do.
03:39It's more of a convention, less, less of a vacation.
03:44But there are, of course, some family members who, but it's only natural when you have this
03:50many people, but the whole kind of point is of the reunion is to try our best to set differences
04:01aside.
04:01It's not always possible, but it's, but it's important for us to try in a way.
04:08Our family reunions are kind of a mini democracy where we, what's good for one is good for all.
04:17And we really try to, to live by that for at least that one week.
04:22What would you recommend?
04:24Like if people haven't, um, you know, tried Lebanese food, like what's the food that's
04:29going to be like, the dish that's going to be like, oh my God, what have I been missing?
04:33Well, I think a lot of people have had Lebanese food without realizing it.
04:38Lubna, which is that very popular thick yogurt is very Lebanese.
04:45And I also, you know, my husband, when he first came to our family reunion, he had never
04:56had cinnamon on a savory dish.
05:00He'd only ever thought of cinnamon as the spice he used in baking.
05:05And for him having cinnamon on lamb and cinnamon on chicken was a revelation.
05:13So I would say, start there.
05:14Next time you're roasting a chicken, put a little bit of cinnamon on it.
05:18He's, he's half Italian, half, half Irish, by the way, not Lebanese.
05:22Right, right.
05:22That is a very different food.
05:25Right.
05:25But he also, when he first came to our reunion, when he met my uncle Mike for the first time,
05:33he opened his mouth to say hello, and my uncle Mike put a spoonful of something in his mouth
05:38and said, what does this need?
05:40What is this?
05:40Does it need salt?
05:42And that was his introduction to my family.
05:44But I think a very good start is using spices in ways that you haven't maybe thought of before.
05:55Right.
05:55And a great Lebanese, very easy dish to make for a first timer in our book is tabbouleh.
06:04Yes.
06:05Which is a beautiful, bright salad.
06:09Yeah.
06:10But I think, I think a signature dish, certainly one of the signature dishes, our family, and
06:17another thing that people might, you know, might wonder why they've been missing it their
06:24whole lives is, is the stuffed grape leaves, Lebanese style, which are not like the Greek
06:29dolmas, which are served mostly cold and with rice.
06:33Because ours are filled with spices and meat, sometimes lamb, sometimes beef, sometimes both,
06:41tomatoes, rice, and they're, and they're served hot and they're absolutely life-changing.
06:49Yeah.
06:50It's my favorite dish in the world actually are, is my family's stuffed grape leaves.
06:55It might seem a little bit daunting at first to lay out grape leaves and make the mix and
07:02roll them up, but it's actually a quite simple recipe because you're just mixing together a
07:08lot of ingredients and then rolling it.
07:10So even though it might look like a different type of preparation than you've done before,
07:15it's very simple.
07:16All the recipes in the book are actually very simple.
07:18useful.
